AFGHAN TALKS BREAK DOWN

The constitutional grand council adjourned in disarray Thursday, leaving the entire process of drawing up a new constitution badly damaged.

The crisis has revealed a bitter struggle between the leaders of the country, with President Hamid Karzai and his Pashtun kinsmen on one side, and on the other the Islamist jihadi leaders and ethnic minorities of the north, who are seeking to preserve some of their wartime power.

Officials in the U.S.-backed government tried to break the deadlock by putting five amendments to the vote.

But the tactic backfired when a great number of the 502 delegates, mostly from the ethnic minorities of northern Afghanistan, refused to vote. In the end only 264 people cast votes, enough for a quorum, and the five amendments passed by a simple majority.

The president and his supporters got their way, but at great political cost. About 48 percent of the delegates did not vote and the amendments in question were not even the most important ones.

"It is a technical win but a political loss," a Western diplomat said. "There is a very high degree of mistrust. It gets harder and harder to resolve."

As the boycotters sat out most of the afternoon, declining calls for prayer and for lunch, it became clear that the three-week process to agree on a new constitution was threatened. "Things are harder to put back together than they were even this morning," the diplomat said.

Mustafa Etemadi, a member of the Shiite Hazara minority from Uruzgan Province, said, "We did not go to vote because our people's desires were not respected."

He added, "We want far-reaching democracy in this country, we want our Parliament to have more authority."

He listed the main demands of the northern minorities. They are determined that the national anthem be in the two languages, Dari and Pashtu, rather than Pashtu alone, and that the Uzbeks be given language rights.

They are also insisting that parliamentary elections be held at the same time as presidential elections, to avoid presidential interference. Similarly, these minorities are calling for a constitution drafted on consensus rather than the rule of the Pashtuns, who are the largest ethnic group and traditional rulers of Afghanistan.

In interviews, delegates revealed genuine grievances among the minorities and a strong desire for a power-sharing agreement within the government.

"We want a strong parliament alongside the president, equal rights for men and women, democracy among all the ethnic groups, and recognition of all the languages of the nation," said Habiba, a teacher from Kabul and another boycotter. "The constitution is not for one tribe or one people," she said. "It belongs to all the people of the country."

Already angry with government lobbying and interference, the boycotters rejected all overtures from government officials and faction leaders. Indeed, the boycotters accused them of making deals at the expense of the people.

Government and officials of the convention, or loya jirga, blamed four or five rabble-rousers for the disruption, accusing them of intimidating people into not voting.